1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing system, an information processing apparatus, a communication fee calculation method, and a program for causing a computer to execute the method for calculating communication fees separately for a plurality of users in accordance with their utilization forms.
2. Description of the Related Art
With technological advancements such as enhanced performance of portable telephone terminals, higher speeds of communications, and the like, a need has increasingly arisen for making use of portable telephone terminals for business in addition to private utilization in recent years. Since an employer will be financially heavily burdened with distributing portable telephone terminals to respective employees for business use, it becomes popular that the employees often utilize their personal portable telephone terminals for business use and the employer pay communication fees for business use to telephone companies. In this case, calculations for communication fees are required separately for private use and business use because a company to which the employees belongs must pay fees for packet communication (hereinafter called “packet communication fees”) in business use to the telephone companies and employees must pay packet communication fees in their private use to the telephone companies.
As a technique related to the calculation of two separate packet communication fees in business use and private use, Japanese Patent No. 3142821 (hereinafter called “Patent Document 1”) discloses a termination charging method in packet communications and a system for implementing this method. This realizes a so-called “toll-free number” function in the packet communication. Hereinafter, the calculation is called “business/private separate calculation”.
On the other hand, JP-2003-179705-A (hereinafter called “Patent Document 2”) discloses an example of a method and a system for the business/private separate calculation. In Patent Document 2, a proxy server for the business/private separate calculation is provided between a portable telephone terminal and a content server. While the portable telephone terminal connects with the content server through the proxy server, the amount of packet communication is measured as business use in the proxy server. A packet communication fee for business use is calculated based on the measured packet amount. The user of the portable telephone terminal pays a total packet communication fee to telephone company, and the packet communication fee for business use is paid back the user from a company to which the user belongs.
A variety of courses have been proposed for business/private separate calculation service from portable telephone companies. In one of the courses, the business/private separate calculation defines a predetermined time zone on weekdays for business use, and defines the remaining time zones for private use. In another course, a user previously registers telephone numbers and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of web sites utilized for business at a telephone company, and communications to/from the telephone of the registered telephones number and the web sites of the registered URLs are recognized as business use by the telephone company.
Generally, the user of the portable telephone terminal determines which of business/private separate calculation services to select, and the user himself personally subscribes to a portable telephone company. Accordingly, selected courses differ from one user to another, as a result, accounting processing is complicated in an company to which the user belongs.
Also, in some cases, if timing at which the user changes subscription contents of a portable telephone company differs from timing at which a calculation for a packet communication fee is changed in a business/private separate calculation system, it is difficult to calculate a correct packet communication fee actually charged to the user even if amount of a packet communication has been correctly calculated for business use.
In the method of Patent Document 2, the following problem arises when a packet communication fee is calculated from a packet communication amount. Since the objects of the method are portable telephones of which the users personally subscribe to portable telephone companies, subscription contents (for example, subscription courses and the like) between portable telephone companies and users differ from one to another, and thus a different calculation equation is used to calculate a packet communication fee from a packet communication amount from one user to another. Further, timing at which the user changes subscription contents to a portable telephone company can be different from timing at which a calculation equation for calculating a packet communication fee is changed in the business/private separate calculation system. However, the method of Patent Document 2 provides insufficient measures to such situations, and it is difficult to calculate a correct packet communication fee actually charged to a user even if a packet communication amount has been correctly calculated for business use. This problem is similar to the method of Patent Document 1 as well.
Further, when a correct packet communication fee must be calculated, the user must submit what reveals a subscription course to the company to which the user belongs. It takes a lot of effort for the user to black out private portions on a bill which is printed on a sheet in order to hide his private information, and then the user submits the bill to the company. On the other hand, the company must make an employee which engages himself in accounting confirm contents of bills submitted from all users. Particularly, when a user changes from one telephone company to another, the user submits the bill of a different telephone company to the company to which the user belongs, as a result, it takes a lot of effort for the company to confirm the bills.